Essays examining the genre of medieval romance in its cultural Christian context, bringing out its chameleon-like character. The relationship between the Christianity of medieval culture and its most characteristic narrative, the romance, is complex and the modern reading of it is too often confused. Not only can it be difficult to negotiate the distant, sometimes alien concepts of religious cultures of past centuries in a modern, secular, multi-cultural society, but there is no straightforward Christian context of Middle English romance - or of medieval romance in general, although this volume focuses on the romances of England. Medieval audiences had apparently very different expectations and demands of their entertainment: some looking for, and evidently finding, moral exempla and analogues of biblical narratives, others secular, even sensational, entertainment of a type condemned by moralising voices. The essays collected here show how the romances of medieval England engage with its Christian culture. Topics include the handling of material from pre-Christian cultures, classical and Celtic, the effect of the Crusades, the meaning of chivalry, and the place of women in pious romances. Case studies, including Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Malory's Morte Darthur, offer new readings and ideas for teaching romance to contemporary students. They do not present a single view of a complex situation, but demonstrate the importance of reading romances with anawareness of the knowledge and cultural capital represented by Christianity for its original writers and audiences. Contributors: HELEN PHILLIPS, STEPHEN KNIGHT, PHILLIPA HARDMAN, MARIANNE AILES, RALUCA L. RADULESCU, CORINNE SAUNDERS, K.S. WHETTER, ANDREA HOPKINS, ROSALIND FIELD, DEREK BREWER, D. THOMAS HANKS, MICHELLE SWEENEY

(Essential Elements Band Folios). Includes: Let's Rock, Majestic March, When The Saints Go Marching In, Mickey Mouse March, Power Rock, Farandole, Jus' Plain Blues, My Heart Will Go On, Rainbow Connection, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, Drums of Corona, Laredo (Concert March), Pomp and Circumstance, Stratford March and Do-Re-Mi.

A collection of Christmas arrangements which can be played by full band or by individual soloists with optional CD or tape accompaniment. Each song is correlated with a specific page in the Esssential Elements Method Books. Includes: Jingle Bells * We Wish You a Merry Christmas * The Chanukkah Song * Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer * and many more!

The diary of radio correspondent James Cassidy presents a unique view of World War II as this reporter followed the Allied armies into Nazi Germany. James Joseph Cassidy was one of 362 American journalists accredited to cover the European Theater of Operations between June 7, 1944, and the war's end. Radio was relatively new, and World War II was its first war. Among the difficulties facing historians examining radio reporters during that period is that many potential primary documents-their live broadcasts-were not recorded. In NBC Goes to War, Cassidy's censored scripts alongside his personal diary capture a front-line view during some of the nastiest fighting in World War II as told by a seasoned NBC reporter. James Cassidy was ambitious and young, and his coverage of World War II for the NBC radio network notched some notable firsts, including being the first to broadcast live from German soil and arranging the broadcast of a live Jewish religious service from inside Nazi Germany while incoming mortar and artillery shells fell 200 yards away. His diary describes how he gathered news, how it was censored, and how it was sent from the battle zone to the United States. As radio had no pictures, reporters quickly developed a descriptive visual style to augment dry facts. All of Cassidy's stories, from the panic he felt while being targeted by German planes to his shock at the deaths of colleagues, he told with grace and a reporter's lean and engaging prose. Providing valuable eyewitness material not previously available to historians, NBC Goes to War tells a "bottom-up" narrative that provides insight into war as fought and chronicled by ordinary men and women. Cassidy skillfully placed listeners alongside him in the ruins of Aachen, on icy back roads crawling with spies, and in a Belgian bar where a little girl wailed "Les Americains partent!" when Allied troops retreated to safety, leaving the town open to German re-occupation. With a journalistic eye for detail, NBC Goes to War unforgettably portrays life in the press corps. This newly uncovered perspective also helps balance the CBS-heavy radio scholarship about the war, which has always focused heavily on Edward R. Murrow and his "Murrow's Boys."

(Essential Elements Band Folios). As a follow up to the popular Movie Favorites, this eagerly awaited collection features the hottest movie themes arranged for full band or individual soloists (with optional accompaniment CD). In the student books, each song includes a page for the full band arrangement as well as a separate page for solo use. Includes: Pirates of the Caribbean, Mission: Impossible Theme, My Heart Will Go On, Zorro's Theme, Music from Shrek, May It Be, You'll Be in My Heart, The Rainbow Connection, Also Sprach Zarathustra and Accidentally in Love .

(Essential Elements Band Folios). As a follow up to the popular Movie Favorites, this collection features hot movie themes arranged for full band or individual soloists (with optional accompaniment CD). In the student books, each song includes a page for the full band arrangement as well as a separate page for solo use. Includes: Pirates of the Caribbean * Mission: Impossible Theme * My Heart Will Go On * Zorro's Theme * Music from Shrek * May It Be * You'll Be in My Heart * The Rainbow Connection * Also Sprach Zarathustra * and Accidentally in Love.

(Essential Elements Band Folios). A collection of popular movie songs arranged to be played by either full band or by individual soloists with optional accompaniment CD or tape. Each arrangement is correlated with a specific page in the Essential Elements Band Method Books. Includes: Forrest Gump - Main Title, The John Dunbar Theme, Theme from "Jurassic Park," Raiders March, Chariots of Fire, Apollo 13, Somewhere Out There, Man from Snowy River, Star Trek - The Motion Picture, Theme from E.T., and Back to the Future.

A collection of popular movie songs arranged to be played by either full band or by individual soloists with optional accompaniment CD or tape. Each arrangement is correlated with a specific page in the Essential Elements Band Method Books. Includes: Forrest Gump - Main Title, The John Dunbar Theme, Theme from "Jurassic Park, " Raiders March, Chariots of Fire, Apollo 13, Somewhere Out There, Man from Snowy River, Star Trek - The Motion Picture, Theme from E.T., and Back to the Future.

A collection of popular movie songs arranged to be played by either full band or by individual soloists with optional accompaniment CD or tape. Each arrangement is correlated with a specific page in the Essential Elements Band Method Books. Includes: Forrest Gump - Main Title, The John Dunbar Theme, Theme from "Jurassic Park, " Raiders March, Chariots of Fire, Apollo 13, Somewhere Out There, Man from Snowy River, Star Trek - The Motion Picture, Theme from E.T., and Back to the Future.

Jack McCarthy has enjoyed success in life beyond any reasonable expectation. A former college football star who started his career in advertising because he "got an offer," is now one of the most successful professionals in his industry. But the lure of being a strategist for William S. Hawkins, the front-running Democratic presidential candidate, has him taking a sabbatical from the job he loves. What happens next is beyond all comprehension, and Jack finds himself in the midst of a real-life nightmare. A fast-paced political thriller, The Labyrinth Campaign intertwines high-stakes politics, big business, and narcissistic power brokers to create a captivating and combustible story.

Mike Sweeney delivers hard-hitting, power-packed poems that are apocalyptic in their vision of a world gone wrong, a broken world in which "pipelines explode in Iraq & Babylonian artifacts/ litter the promenades." His heaped-up images plunge the reader into toxic skies, turnpike jazz, and the pain that comes from the knowledge that "no matter who you ever were they get you in the end." Yet there is, throughout, the energy and saving power of language, the power that enables you to "damn near levitate."
Nicholas Rinaldi, author of Between Two Rivers, The Jukebox Queen of Malta, Bridge Fall Down, and The Luftwaffe in Chaos, Professor Emeritus, Fairfield University
.steady, grounded, human, subtle, sane. He's a big guy & a good man.
Allen Ginsberg
If Gerard Manley Hopkins were to wax poetic on Michael Jordan, the poems might look like Mike Sweeney's. Not only has Sweeney found a voice, he has invented a form all his own. Read In Memory of the Fast Break aloud. It's beautiful - to eye and ear Fearless, learned, muscular, musical, walloping, and possessed of soul and gravitas, this poetry offers lucid unsentimental reportage on a world simultaneously sumptuous and bitter, luminous portraiture of human flesh engaged in the sometimes ludicrous, sometimes heroic quest for some semblance of a physical or metaphysical personal best, and expansive heroic rhythms which are sorely missing from most contemporary verse. Sweeney writes about politics, rock-n-roll, sports, and the New England and Irish culture that made him what he is today: author of In Memory of the Fast Break, one of the very best collections of contemporary verse I've ever laid eyes on.
Michele Madigan Somerville, author of Wisegal (Ten Pell Books) and Black Irish
Mike Sweeney's poems are reverberating elegiac celebrations in which what we have all lost - the music of the 60's and 70's, innumerable basketball and football games, our youth, our wars - returns, stark and triumphant. The present collapses into the past, which also collapses, but then reforms via breathless rushes of word hunks that capture an authentic American experience that more conventional grammar and less impetuous diction would betray. Ginsberg howls and Frost ruminates throughout the volume to be sure, but through an original, haunting, and exuberant voice.
Sidney Gottlieb, Professor of Media Studies, Sacred Heart University